Friday, April 09, 2010

Career Redemption and Resurrection Roulette

There's nothing that people in the country love more than seeing someone famous getting knocked down a peg or 100. 

Except maybe seeing that person overcome the obstacles and situation and redeem themselves in public.

How else can one explain the reaction to Tiger Woods resuming his golf career in rather spectacular fashion at Augusta? He was cheered at practically every opportunity as he ended up with a four under 68 and was just two shots off the lead. Woods was so good that people actually could focus on his golf game and not on his sleazy personal life.

Then you've got former Newark Mayor Sharpe James coming home after a year stint in federal prison for selling city property to his girlfriend at a cut rate discount for $46,000 while she turned around and sold it for more than $600,000. He came home to a hero's welcome, and makes one wonder whether he's going to attempt to get back into politics. James is furiously attempting to rewrite the history, but the fact is that Newark is a much better place since James lost to Cory Booker and Booker cleaned house (incidentally finding the sales transactions and other

The same can be said of disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who said as much this week. He is contemplating going back into politics, but I think his single biggest obstacle isn't that he admitted paying for sex with prostitutes (okay, call 'em call girls - but it's the same damned thing only that you're paying more for the same things), but that his judgment is so screwed up that he thought that David Paterson would make a good lieutenant governor.

That decision has cost the state dearly as when Paterson was elevated to governor, Paterson was a fish out of water and is incapable of governing in an effective manner being surrounded with multiple scandals of his own making.

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